


to mourn is to remember is to love

by SlytherinLyn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, no caps, written pre season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 22:55:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18270827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinLyn/pseuds/SlytherinLyn
Summary: "after everything’s been settled for a while, after things have been rebuilt, earth holds a parade for anyone who lost someone to march in and remember them by.and everyone’s lost someone."





	to mourn is to remember is to love

**Author's Note:**

> this was written before season 8 came out, so not all the characters who died are, you know, dead. it also takes place right before season 8 so that works i guess.  
> please be kind, and kudos and bookmarks are appreciated, but nice comments might make me cry with joy.

after everything’s been settled for a while, after things have been rebuilt, earth holds a parade for anyone who lost someone to march in and remember them by.  


and everyone’s lost someone.  


the paladins take up the lead. they aren’t wearing their armor, just casual clothing. people recognize them regardless. at first, when people first see them, they cheer. they yell appreciation and thanks and luck and love endlessly until they grow nearer. because unlike usual, they aren’t smiling and waving and yelling thank yous and throwing roses. they look like they’ve been through hell and it takes people a moment to remember that they have.  


shiro’s up front, holding pictures of him and adam and he has rainbows painted on the side of his face. he’s got pictures of all the ambassadors and members of the coalition that had passed in the time they were missing. he bears the weight of hundreds that he feels he failed to protect because he wasn’t there. so he carries their pictures and their names as he mourns his love he at least wished to see again and the years he had lost trying to protect him from across the galaxy  


hunk is next. he carries a picture of his entire family, some of which are standing right there with him. some. he carries a picture of his youngest sibling, who the galra had deemed unable to be of any use. he and his family hold that picture together, heads high, so everyone can see that despite the unimaginable pain they were going through, despite the tears streaming down their face, they would survive this.  


lance stands with his sisters and his brothers and his mom and his dad and his nephews and his nieces and without his grandparents and some of his sibling’s spouses. they carry not pictures, but belongings. the things they had treasured most. a rosary for their grandmother. a baseball hat for their grandfather. one of lance’s nephews is wearing a jacket far too large with his fathers name written along the bottom of the back. he sits on lance’s shoulders and lets himself be the center of attention in their little group.  


pidge and keith come next. they stand together, matt, sam, and colleen next to pidge and krolia and kolivan next to keith. each family holds a plaque, large, shiny, and heavy, with tiny lettering and a large symbol on top of each. the kogane’s lists all the members of the blade of marmora that had fallen in the fight against zarkon, in the hands of a rogue druid, in the war to free the universe. at the top of the plaque the blade’s insignia glows galran purple, and it is a message to all that not all galra were bad, and not all invincible soldiers made it through the war.  


the holts, next to them, hold a similar plaque, instead with the names of every member of the rebellion that had given their life to save those of the ones they cared about. pidge wrote the names of the ones she had known on her skin. te’osh is written largest. the rebels have no symbol, no marking to identify the thrown together army of people wanting to survive. so instead, in a dark orange, pidge had written “Rebels” at the top in altean. (when coran, allura, and romelle had seen it, they’d gotten choked up. the thought of their language surviving through those who had not was not a happy thought, but at the very least one that told them again that they were not gone yet)  


the alteans came next. they were all wearing pink and black, and allura had shifted her hair color to a light shade of rose. they had painted their faces in the way alteans did in funeral processions, with half white and half red with a pink strip down the center. red was for what coursed through their veins, white was for the magic the alteans used to bring life into their worlds, and pink was a mixture of the two as a tribute to those whose red had spilt and whose magic had dried up. painted on their arms, were the names of everyone they had lost. Allura and Coran hand searched through the information they downloaded from the castle for any names of alteans that had long since been killed, but had still been the first casualties of the war. their arms were nearly entirely full of paint, and written a bit bigger on each of their arms was alfor’s name. romelle, who had been born many, many years after the fall of altea, had written the names of everyone from the colony she could remember, her brother’s being largest, and her parent’s being next to his. her arms were full up of names, though it didn’t hold a candle to allura and coran’s arms. the three of them clasped hands and let tears fall every now and then, heads held high just like hunk’s.  


what came after them was a flood of people so thick faces blurred together and their cries merged into a single yell. however, if someone looked close enough, they would be able to pick out a great many faces in the crowd. faces like those of the MFE fighters, who marched together, hands grasping each other’s tightly enough to nearly cut off their circulation, holding a sign with the names of the pilots who had died in the decision to let them fight first. faces like shay’s and rax’s, who carried a sketch of their father, holding each other and soaking in the sun he never got to see. faces like ryner, who had visited to see the paladins, bearing no names, no pictures, no belongings, only the knowledge that she marched for those who had fallen silently, who had fallen with no notice, who had fallen with no one to mourn.  


many marched. many more had fallen. many more would. the war on earth may have been over, but the war in the cosmos was still in full swing. so they marched for those already fallen, and those who had yet to fall.  


and as they marched, they prayed for the end.


End file.
